


Where the Evening Splits in Half

by theorchardofbones



Category: Mafia - Fandom
Genre: Blood, Gen, That's kind of it?, This ends badly anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorchardofbones/pseuds/theorchardofbones
Summary: It's a job gone wrong, and it's Vito lying on the ground, a bullet in his gut.It should've been Henry.
Relationships: Vito Scaletta/Henry Tomasino
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Where the Evening Splits in Half

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by (and title taken from) [Wishbone](https://genius.com/Richard-siken-wishbone-annotated) by Richard Siken. It was originally going to be shippy, but it's surprisingly hard to slip romance in when someone's bleeding to death.

_This is where it ends,_ he thinks. 

_This is where it all ends._

This is no battlefield, no great war. They are soldiers, but not for any lofty cause.

Theirs was supposed to be a simple job, but nothing is ever really simple. Not in life, not in what they do, not in the way Henry wakes up each morning and kisses his wife on the forehead and says, _See you later, Peach_ without breaking down with guilt. 

There’s some simplicity in death, though. One minute you _are_ — a complex system of organs and bones working in unison; the next you’re _not._ One minute you're whistling down the streets of Empire Bay with a swing in your step; the next—

_This is where it ends,_ he thinks, and — _God, forgive me._

Prayers are worthless, at least to a man with hands so drenched in blood he doesn’t know the colour of them underneath any more. He might have been a good Catholic boy, once; years later might’ve convinced himself it was enough to go to church every Sunday, enough to wash the stain off his soul. 

But it’s not. There aren't enough _Hail_ _Mary_ -s, enough penance to undo the destruction wrought by his own hands. 

Maybe this is his reckoning. Maybe this is the moment the scales get balanced, one life to make up for so many. 

But it’s all wrong, somehow. He’s on the ground, and his elbow’s exploding in pain, but the bullet — there isn’t one, maybe, _definitely,_ because he’s patting all over his stomach, his chest, and he’s in disbelief because there _isn't one._

Beside him, on the ground, Vito gives a low moan.

_No._

His memory’s a blur, a whirl of colours and sounds: the gunshot, something — some _one_ barreling into him — and even before his mind has pieced it all together, in his heart he _knows._

That bullet had his name on it, and Vito took it for him.

‘No, no, _no.’_

The word tumbles out of his mouth, and it sounds like something inhuman. He gets onto his knees somehow, and he puts his hands on Vito’s stomach to try to stem the flow of blood but there’s just so much, so _much,_ and now his hands are red— 

‘Finish it, Henry,’ Vito spits, through gritted teeth. ‘Finish the job.’

One or the other of them must have shot the fucker, too; he’s curled up on the ground and there’s blood pooling on the ground around him, and Henry can hear his breath rattling in his lungs from all the way over here. They tell you to shoot twice, just to be sure, but there’s no way the bastard’s coming back from this.

‘That bullet was for me, V. It was s’posed to be for me.’

If this were a battlefield, he’d be trained in what to do — trained to patch Vito up enough to keep him afloat until they got help. Funny how they march out into the streets, good little soldiers trained to take a life with brutal accuracy, but never — _never_ — to save one.

Vito’s pale, so pale. No matter how hard Henry presses down on the wound in his good, the crimson just seems to bloom all the more vividly across the white of his shirt.

‘You need to get out of here, Henry.’

There’s a version of this where it’s Henry bleeding out, his blood staining Vito’s hands; a version of this where Henry’s the one telling him to go, to get clear before someone catches him.

Probably there’s a version, too, where Henry asks him, _begs_ him to stay.

‘Ain’t goin’ anywhere without you, V.’

He gets around to Vito’s other side, and he hooks his hands under Vito’s arms, and he pulls, and he _tugs,_ and before he gets Vito very far he has to stop because it turns out people are fucking heavy when they’re dying.

There’s a smear on the ground where Henry dragged him, red like a popsicle in summer.

‘Henry. Please.’

Vito reaches up and catches his arm, plucking at his sleeve. His touch is so flimsy, so frail, Henry can barely feel it.

‘You need to go.’

But Henry shakes his head, and he pulls at Vito again, and somehow he’s even heavier now, like he’s weighed down by the sum of everything he’s done, every choice he’s made.

The car’s so far away, out on the main street, parked down at the end. Too far for Henry to drag him, not before he bled out along the way.

Maybe Henry can’t save Vito, but he can stay with him.

Henry lowers himself to the ground, and Vito’s dead weight but he manages to drag him into his lap, pulls until Vito’s head is cradled against his chest. The blood is coming out slower now, and they’re both soaked in it, and the smell makes Henry’s stomach churn.

‘You’re an idiot,’ Vito says. ‘You know that?’

He’s smiling, the asshole — bleeding out in the middle of an alleyway with a smile on his lips.

‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I am, V,’ Henry counters. ‘That bullet was for me.’

Vito makes something like a shrug, and even that motion sets his chest heaving, a cough racking through him. Blood bubbles at his lips, and Henry tries to wipe it away but his fingers are all bloody too so he only makes it worse.

‘Stay with me, V. You hear me? Stay with me.’

A nod, and Vito grimaces, and he reaches a hand up. Seeks Henry’s with it, clutching onto it tight. He’s not stopping the flow of blood any more; neither of them are. Is there even any point?

There’s a version of this where Henry knows just what to say; knows all the words of comfort, the words that will carry Vito calmly from this world to the next.

‘It should’ve been me,’ is what he says in the end.

‘Henry…’

Vito’s voice is reed-thin now, like there’s already someone calling him away. Henry wonders if he’s seeing the light yet — if there’s even a light for people like them, people who do the terrible things they do.

‘Tell me somethin’, Henry.’

A bitter laugh forces itself up from Henry’s throat. Vito’s last minutes on Earth, and he wants to hear Henry talk, of all things?

‘I don’t know what to say.’

Vito twists in his lap and gives him a look. His eyes are hazy, but he’s still lucid enough that his glance cuts right through Henry.

‘You gonna deny a man his dyin’ wish?’

It’s a cruel reminder — not that there needs to be one, not when the truth is daubed all over the alleyway, all over _them,_ in vivid red.

Henry draws in a breath, and sighs it out. He looks up toward the greying sky and for a long moment, he thinks.

‘When I was little, I broke my arm,’ he says. ‘I was sure I was done for — not from the broken arm. I knew, see, I knew when my Mamma got her hands on me, she was gonna kill me.’

Vito chuckles, a rasping sound.

‘Yeah? How’d it happen?’

It’s something Henry hasn’t thought about in a long time, but now that he’s playing it back the memories come to him in full colour — the hot, sharp pain shooting along his forearm; the cold, eerie numbness that had settled in along with the shock.

‘It was back in Sicily,’ Henry says. ‘Me and my friends, we had this… this stupid game we used to play. If one of us could swim out so far in the lake, everyone else had to swim farther. If one of us could jump so high, everyone else had to try to get higher.’

‘Like chicken?’

Henry considers it for a moment. After a pause, he nods.

‘Yeah, like chicken. It was one of those stupid hot days towards the end of summer when everybody was in a bad mood. There was nothin’ for kids like us to do to keep busy, so we made our own fun. There was a tree outside one of our houses, I don’t even remember whose street it was on. It was so big we thought it was as tall as the Eiffel Tower. We were dumb kids, y’know.’

He sighs, shakes his head. It was such a long time ago it seems like another life. Back then, he’d been so sure he was invincible.

‘I can’t even remember who climbed up it first, but he only got halfway before he slipped and slid all the way back down. Tore his knees open and ran home cryin’ to his Mamma.

‘So I went next, and I got up as high as he did, and then I made it onto the branch. Only it was even higher looking down from up there.’

He feels Vito squeeze his hand just slightly.

‘You came back down?’

‘Nope. Couldn’t even climb down, so I stayed up there bawling like a baby while all my buddies laughed.’

He can still remember the fear, the way the world had seemed to spin below him; remembers the tears spilling down his cheeks, snot oozing from his nose.

Vito makes a sort of scoff.

‘You, cryin’ over somethin’ little like that?’ he said, hoarsely. ‘No way.’

‘Yeah, yeah. You tell anyone, I’ll kill you.’

He pauses to flash Vito a wry smile. In the lull, he can hear the sound of sirens echoing through the streets. Nothing they can do about it now.

‘One of my friends, Sal, he decided he’d climb up and show me how it was done, and he got all the way to the top. I still remember the look on his face when he looked down at me. Like he knew he was better than me.

‘So I wiped my face off on the back of my arm, and I got up and started climbin’ again. I was so furious at my friend, I wasn’t even afraid any more. I just wanted to knock that smug look off his face.’

He opens his mouth to continue, but Vito cuts him off with a sharp, wet cough that sets his chest spasming.

‘Vito, you—’

Vito shakes his head, weakly puts up a trembling hand.

‘I’m okay. Keep talkin’.’

He’s not — far from it — but Henry wets his lips and continues. 

‘That tree, it was so big the branches nearly reached out and touched the roof of one of the houses nearby it. So I figured I could get up there, and I could jump over the gap, and show Sal he wasn’t hot shit after all.

‘Only the gap was bigger than I thought. Thing is, I probably would’ve made it, if I wouldn’t’ve hesitated. See, I tried to take a running jump but I hesitated, and when I went to jump, I didn’t have the momentum. And… splat.’

Despite himself, despite how much his eight-year-old self had thought it was the end of the world, he laughs. He remembers his friends cheering, egging him on, and how exhilarated he’d been — so full of pride, of triumph. That fall must have looked like something special from below.

‘My Ma, she tore me a new one,’ he says. ‘And then she called the doctor and she fussed over me ‘til he got there, and she fussed some more. I think she was just glad somethin’ worse hadn’t happened.’

He’s not even sure Vito’s listening any more. If it weren’t for the slow, shuddering rise and fall of his chest, he’d think he was already gone.

It’s pure reflex that has him lifting his hand up to Vito’s hair. Maybe it’s the memory of his mother, so close he can almost feel the warmth of her embrace; maybe it’s the fear of someday dying alone, with nobody to hold him like this.

Just like his mother used to when he was little — when he was sick, when he was scared of the monsters under the bed — he brushes his fingers gently through Vito’s hair.

‘You’re gonna be okay, V,’ he murmurs. ‘You’ll be okay.’

It’s a lie, but it’s all Henry’s got. He repeats it, over and over, even after Vito’s chest has gone still.


End file.
